Robert Alter Knihy

English (translation)Original Hebrew

This is a collection of essays on each book of the Bible, and a number that relate to the Bible as a whole. It brings modern literary and historical analysis to this greatest of all works of literature.

The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. Pleasure and Change contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir Frank Kermode. In essays that were originally delivered as Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in November of 2001, Kermode reinterprets the question of canon formation in light of two related and central pleasure and change . He asks how aesthetic pleasure informs what we find valuable, and how this perception changes over time. Kermode also explores the role of chance, observing the connections between canon formation and unintentional and sometimes even random circumstance. Geoffrey Hartmann (Yale University), John Guillory (New York University), and Carey Perloff (director of the American Conservatory Theatre) offer incisive comments on these essays, to which Kermode responds in a lively rejoinder. The volume begins with a helpful introduction by Robert Alter. Theresult is a stimulating and accessible discussion of a highly significant cultural debate.

A selection of the Best Writing in Israel TodayEdited by Joel Blocker, introduction by Robert AlterThe present volume of Israeli stories reassuringly illustrates the other half of a frequently asserted half-truth. Modern Hebrew literature, it is claimed, liked Yiddish literature, does not really share the large concerns of serious literary activity in the West. The Hebrew writer ordinarily does not address himself to the human situation with all of its far-reaching possibilities of tragedy of comedy, but to the Jewish situation, which is quite another thing. Consequently, Hebrew and Yiddish writers—so goes the claim—develop a system of typology rather than methods of characterization, for they are most essentially interested in the Jewish people, its particular qualities and its present fate or ultimate destiny, while the individual, who is central in other modern literatures, stands at the periphery of their vision.

Amos Oz (1939-2018) war ein prägender israelischer Autor und Mitbegründer der Friedensbewegung Schalom Achschaw. Seine bekanntesten Werke, darunter „Eine Geschichte von Liebe und Finsternis“, wurden weltweit anerkannt. Robert Alter beschreibt einfühlsam Oz' Leben, seine Familie, das Kibbuz und seinen Kampf für ein pluralistisches Israel.